(no subject)

For ages, teenagers/young adults in Arbury have been yelling at me for being bald[1]. Today an old lady I said Good Morning to said she liked my hair. I don't know what she liked, if anything at all, but it was very sweet.

[1] Indeed, my notion of different levels of apology apply here to. If I, or someone, is unconventionally dressed, or badly dressed, or ugly, or fat, or bald, or has a regional or class accent, or is foreign, and someone is offended by this, you don't feel to have (1) deliberately offended them, but you may feel to have (2) inconsiderately or (3) inadvertently offended them -- the way you might if you had bad table manners, or a bad small, or similar. Whereas in fact, not even (4) a regret devoid of causation is appropriate, you can drop the response as far as (5) a sarcastic "I'm sorry you're so stupid..."

(no subject)

Last year I posted http://cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com/296126.html. The response was sufficiently positive I felt I should repost a slightly cut down version here.

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Every year there's a bit of a blat-blat about valentines day, with some people (and all advertising) going over the top, many people feeling pissed off, many people justifying it.

Is it worth celebrating valentines? Certainly. Love is a great thing, we have days to celebrate all sorts of crap, why not this?

Is there a good reason people get annoyed? Certainly. The problem isn't people who celebrate themselves, but a lot of advertising suggesting you have to.

Should we cancel valentines? I don't think so. Do we cancel Christmas to avoid upsetting people with no families? Do we cancel New Years to avoid upsetting people who can't drink? Do we cancel Easter or Ramadan to avoid upsetting people of different or no religion? Do we cancel sysadmin appreciation day because 99% of the population think it's stupid? All (except the last) are too noticeable to simply ignore. But we do make an effort to reach out to people without families on Christmas, etc.

Why not tomorrow take the opportunity to think of people you love in different ways? Is there anyone you owe a kiss? Have you told your best friend that they are your best friend? Did you ever ring your father up just to say you love him?

OK, I'm being sappy, but I know about 30% of you need some cheering up. Everyone else please continue being sappy or sarcastic as appropriate.

ETA: For that matter, two alternative celebrations have been suggested, too late for this year, but good, in that they're not anti-romantic, but a-romantic, an alternative for people who don't want to complain about romance, but want to do something else:

1. Garlic party day
2. Randomly chop some heads off or burn people on wheels or whatever supposedly happened to supposed St. Valentine.

(no subject)

Clive's sacrifice bought us another day. I cannot bring myself to write more yet, but her stegion was butchered, but we brought her out, lacking no more then most of a leg and part of a hand. She rides with Johnson, light-headed, and as we rode we mourned her injuries and faithful mount.